The present invention refers to a cushioning member having an undulating, i.e. wavy conformation for supporting one or more parts of a human body on a resting surface thereof. A cushioning member of such a kind may for instance be used in footwear articles, chairs, vehicle seats, saddleries and upholstering shops in general, furniture accessories and fittings such as chairs, mattresses, pillows and the like, leisure products and items such as inflatable mattresses, pads, pillows and the like, and in any application in which it is advantageous to provide a cushioned support in view of making it more comfortable for one or more parts of the body to rest thereupon.
Italian Patent Application No. FI2000A000215, filed on Oct. 20, 2000 by this same Applicant, describes a cushioning footwear sole comprising a plurality of cushioning modules provided in a juxtaposed arrangement in a longitudinal direction. Each one of such modules consists of a thread-like element made of a high-strength and high-rigidity material, and bent in such a manner as to form a sequence of eyelets lying on a plane that passes along a longitudinal axis of the modules and is normal to a ground plane, in a concordantly inclined manner, so that each such eyelet, following a sole impinging against the ground, will bend, i.e. deflect with such a pliability, i.e. yieldingness as allowed for by a length thereof, and tends then to regain, under an immediate spring-back effect, its non-deformed condition, substantially according to a damped aperiodic harmonic motion mode. The greater or smaller extent of pliability, or yieldingness, further depends on the smaller or greater a density with which the modules are arranged transversely.
Although it proves particularly advantageous, a technical approach described above, however, turns out as being rather complex from a production point of view. As a matter of fact, various modules are manufactured by performing an extrusion process using a mold that has a shape matching a longitudinal section of the modules themselves, and an obtained semi-finished product is formed by an undulated, i.e. corrugated plate, from which individual modules are then cut. In addition, assembling the individual modules together involves each single module, which is generally rectilinear in its cut-off state, being first of all brought into shape manually, and an entire assembly being then secured in a predetermined position so as to obtain a final shape for application to a sole. Various modules are fastened by sewing them directly on to the sole or through proper hook-on members that act as spacers. It may therefore be readily appreciated that a process needed to produce and assemble the individual modules is necessarily quite a long and complex one, owing to its including a number of operational steps involving considerably high costs to perform them.
Furthermore, the modules shall have differing lengths and conformations, depending on both a final shape of an assembly that has to be obtained and different sizes of shoes, boots or whichever other products that have to be manufactured therewith. This entails a need for a considerable number of molds to be provided and used to comply with an entire production variety, and this of course entrains quite considerable costs with it.
A further limitation imposed by this technical approach is connected with difficulties for assemblies formed by the individual modules to be given shapes that correspond exactly with a shape of a component part with which they are to be associated (i.e. soles in a particular case being considered), considering limited ability of modules constituted by rectilinear thread-like elements to be brought into a desired shape, i.e. to allow for any wide extent of moldability into shape.
It therefore is an object of the present invention to provide a cushioning member having an undulating, i.e. wavy conformation, which is particularly advantageous not only from a functional point of view, but also from a production-related point of view.